I’m Sorry, But It IS Funny!

What a difference a few letters can make!  It seems the Daily Universe, Brigham Young University’s newspaper, had to call back 18,000 copies of their newspaper after an unfortunate typo made it through unnoticed.  While this is surprising in and of itself, what’s even more surprising is that the LDS community doesn’t seem to be enjoying the obvious humor of the simple mistake.  Instead, apparently some are actually putting forth the idea that somebody sabotaged the newspaper intentionally to damage the church.  Really?  I mean, read it for yourself.  It’s obviously just a typo…. and really funny!

The twelve apostles? Or the twelve... apostates!

Too much evidence?

Noticed something very odd about myself tonight.  No idea if it’s only my own quirky nature or a byproduct of being formerly LDS. 

I’m reading a book right now that basically gives all the factual reasons to believe in the Bible as a reliable source of information and in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  I am blown away by the amount of actual real hands-on evidence there is backing this all up.  Once one actually looks at it with an open mind, it’s almost an airtight case.  And yet there is something strange to me about having actual evidence of it all.

It probably stems from my lifelong upbringing of having beliefs based on faith alone.  For so long, the things I had faith in were not supported by science, reason, or facts.  That’s what made it faith!  Sure, anyone can believe in something that can be proven… but it takes real faith to believe in something that not only couldn’t be proven, but could in many ways be proven wrong.  Real world evidence and faith were not connected in any way for me.  A faith based even partially on factual evidence was thought to be a weak faith, indeed.  One who needed factual evidence to believe was lacking in faith.  I was warned that a faith based even fractionally on science or real world evidence was vulnerable to being shaken apart by new discoveries or scientific theories. 

I’ve had a strange reaction to this book, which so clearly and overwhelming proves (at least to my mind) the existence of Christ, his mission on the earth, and yes, even His resurrection… and not in a feel-good burning-in-the-bosom kind of way, either… but in the court-of-law kind of way.  I find myself feeling like I am not relying enough on faith for my beliefs… almost like I’m starting to be convinced with too much reason and evidences.  I understand I am supposed to have faith, but am very new to the whole idea of faith actually harmonizing with science and facts.  It’s almost like it’s too easy to believe now.  The leap of faith isn’t great enough to really be faith.  Weird, I know.

Rationally, it makes sense that the God who created the universe would be the same God that would allow us to discover things about that universe… things that would testify of Him.  The more we know about the earth, about history, about archeology, and even about the theory of evolution, the more we find out the truth about the world around us and it’s past.  And truth can only lead to one place… the Author of truth.  It’s incredibly freeing to realize that facts and reason can be a part of my faith rather than it’s diametrical opposite.

Man did not invent DNA, God did that.  Man did not bury fossils in the earth, God did that.  Man did not allow ancient civilizations to remain intact for our discovery in modern times, God did that.  Why would God make such things contradictory to His truth?   The simple answer is that He didn’t.  All things testify of Him… even the ones that we have a hard time figuring out.  Sure, our imperfect theories of science and history can sometimes change as we realize we’ve made errors and incorrect assumptions.  But the closer we get to correct science, the closer we get to God. 

I, Nephi, having been born of hot parents…

Had a great laugh tonight. I’ve been reading through Genesis and listening to Chuck Smith’s teachings as I read. Something really lept out at me tonight. I was studying this scripture in Genesis…

Genesis 39:6 And he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand; and he knew not ought he had, save the bread which he did eat. And Joseph was [a] goodly [person], and well favoured.

That term "goodly" stood out to me pretty clearly as it is literally the seventh word to appear in the Book of Mormon.

1 Nephi 1:1 I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father…

This didn’t strike me as peculiar until I heard Chuck Smith talk about what it meant to be "goodly". After researching what he said to make sure he was giving me good information, it turns out that "goodly" is translated from an ancient term that actually means handsome and good-looking. It has no bearing on how good a person is, but on their physical appearance entirely. In fact, in EVERY other translation of the Bible, except the King James Version, it IS translated as handsome and good-looking.

So let’s back up here a little bit. We know Joseph Smith had the KJV Bible open during much of his process of ‘translating’ the Book of Mormon. He, in an effort to show that Nephi’s parents were good and knowledgable people, appears to have borrowed a term from the KJV bible that he didn’t understand the meaning of. If you were to ‘reverse translate’ that verse back into the ancient language it was supposedly written in, it would literally say something like…

1 Nephi 1:1 I, Nephi, having been born of good-looking parents, therefore I was taught somewhat in all the learning of my father…

I find it incredible that the first clue to unravel the mystery of whether Joseph was a translator or the actual writer of The Book of Mormon is right there in the VERY FIRST VERSE!

Either Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon borrowing liberally from the Bible or Nephi’s parents were really very good-looking people… and Nephi was really proud of that fact.

It seems unlikely to me that the opening verse of the "most correct book on earth", the keystone of the only "true church on the face of the earth", and the key to eternal salvation would be a supposed prophet of God telling us that his parents were hot.

————————

The facts:
Joseph Smith claims to have translated the Book of Mormon from
"reformed Egyptian", whatever that is. There has never been a shred of
evidence to show that such a language actually existed. But, if you
look at the Hebrew text that the KJV bible is translated from, the word
translated into ‘goodly’ is "to’ar". In every Biblical example that I
could find, it means good-looking. When applied to men it is translated
"handsome." When applied to women it was translated as "beautiful."
When applied to cattle is was translated as "favoured." If Nephi HAD
meant ‘favoured’ then it would literally have meant "I Nephi, having
been born of favored cattle…"
It’s also interesting to look at the cross references given in the Book
of Mormon. "Goodly" in verse one is cross referenced ONLY with Proverbs
22:1 which says "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches…"
while ignoring 33 times in the Bible the exact term "goodly" is used.
That seems to me an obvious effort to cover up or to force a change in
the meaning of the word in Scripture by those who set up the
cross-referencing system of the Book of Mormon.
It appears that when the KJV was translated in 1611, ‘goodly’ still
meant attractive or beautiful. Several hundred years later in the
America’s it looks like Joseph Smith made the same mistake I’d always
made in assuming that goodly meant what it sounds like it means….
full of good.
Of course this will be of no proof to someone who still WANTS to
beleive in The Book of Mormon because they will say that the source
material for the Book of Mormon was different than the Bible. But, for
those who begin to look at whether or not Joseph Smith DID use the KJV
bible as a source for his fabrication of the book, it should stand as
yet another piece of evidence supporting that… at least it does for
me.
I can almost picture Joseph writing that first line and thinking,
"Nah… that doesn’t sound scriptural enough" and changing the word to
"goodly". He had no idea he was changing the entire meaning of what he
was trying to say.
A great resource for studying out this kind of thing can be found at www.blueletterbible.org

If My Brain Was More Like A Computer

I love computers… at least when they are working right. They are amazing. They can hold, sort, and manipulate information on a level far superior to what my puny little brain can handle. When they get all full of junk, you can delete stuff or, in extreme circumstances, reboot the entire system from it’s original startup disks and start all over again from square one. I’ve had to do that a few times, and it’s weird. Suddenly everything looks and acts exactly like it did the day you took it out of the box. You’ve got to start all over again, changing the settings, the icons, the background, the mouse action to the way you like it. And everything runs so fast! It’s like a brand new computer.

And when you want to get new information into your computer, you just hook it up to a firewire connection and let ‘er rip. Gigabytes of information traded in minutes. And it just accepts it. It doesn’t try to argue with you or question whether you really want it there.

I wish my brain was more like a computer. I feel like that old computer that’s been around for too many years, had too many different programs installed, and is full of mostly useless junk. Oh, there’s hopefully some good information in there… stuff I’d want to back up and save, but most of it is ready for the recycle bin.

How I would love to be able to dump my years of programming and start with that fresh screen again. I would love to be able to backup and save what knowledge is good and just over-write what’s not.

And I would really love to have a firewire connection to my brain. I get so frustrated with the slow process of putting information into my brain. It’s the equivalent of putting an e-book in your computer by typing it all in manually rather than just downloading it already typed. There is so much I want to know. So much I want to read. So much I want to listen to. I just found the ENTIRE bible as taught by Chuck Smith… hundreds of hours… and I want to listen to it all right now. I’ve already got nearly 400 hours of my local Pastor’s teaching saved on my computer that I’m trying to work my way through. I hate that I’m limited to actually physically looking at every word I need to read. I hate that I must process every single sound vibration that my ears pick up into words, one slow word at a time. I hate that my internal programming has trouble storing some of the information I can get a hold of because it has to overwrite old bad programming first.

If my brain were a computer….

CTRL-ALT-DELETE
REFORMAT HARD DRIVE
INSTALL LATEST OPERATING SYSTEM
DOWNLOAD BIBLE

I beleive to recieve greif is to to deceive

Okay, that title makes no sense. Until you understand this one thing about me. For whatever reason, I have always had a mental block when it comes to the "I before E" rule of spelling… which is obvious if you’ve read any of my posts. I used to obsess about it. Now I’ve accepted it. I’m sorry if it drives you crazy. Trust me, it’s only one of my many imperfections. Fortunately the rest aren’t quite so obvious to everyone… or maybe they are. Wait a sec… is that a beam in my eye?